The invention relates to fairings for plastic baseboards.
In order to achieve a smooth transition between the floor and wall surfaces of a room use is nowadays made of baseboards which are almost universally of plastic material. Such plastic baseboards are essentially comprised of a flat foot portion which lies flat on the floor surface and of a vertical wall-facing portion which is joined to the foot portion at the inner edge of the latter and which projects vertically upwards and lies flat against the wall surface. Usually, the baseboard is held in place by means of cementing material connecting the baseboard to the floor and/or to the wall surfaces.
When laying down plastic baseboards of this type, difficulties have always arisen when the baseboard is to be made to travel around a projecting corner, e.g., a portion where two wall surfaces meet at right angles. If a plasticmaterial baseboard member is to be bent around a projecting corner of a room, and if no special steps are taken, the flat foot portion of the baseboard member, which is supposed to lie flat against the floor surface, will instead bulge upwards and bend up into contact with the edge of the projecting corner and even into contact with the wall-facing portion of the baseboard member. This is of course intolerable from an aesthetic viewpoint, and furthermore interferes with cleaning in the vicinity of this portion of the baseboard.
Accordingly, the baseboard foot portion, the portion which is to lie flat against the floor surface, is sometimes cut in the region of the baseboard which is to engage the projecting corner, in order to prevent the development of such a bulge. However, instead of the bulge, one now is presented with an unsightly interruption in the continuity of the foot portion of the baseboard member.
In order to avoid this discontinuity, use is sometimes made of two separate baseboard members, the foot portions of which are cut off at an angle of 135.degree., so that when the two baseboard members are placed against the wall surfaces, their foot portions form a bevel-type joint. In actual practice, this expedient does not constitute a satisfactory solution, because the meeting free end portions of two such baseboard members tend not to be held tightly enough to the wall and floor surfaces at such corner. Generally, these meeting free end portions of the baseboard members become more or less detached within a time period as short as 4 to 6 weeks.
Current practice is to stretch the foot portion of the baseboard member in the region where it is to engage the meeting wall portions of the projecting corner, and then to lay such properly deformed baseboard member into place. However, to effect the necessary stretching prior to laying down of the baseboard, resort must be had to methods which are relatively expensive and time-consuming to perform. Moreover, the expedient itself is usually not completely successful, and the stretching of the corner portion of the baseboard member will often not be exact enough to prevent the development of a bulge in the wall-facing portion of the baseboard member, just above the foot portion of the baseboard member.